Well - it looks like only one of our hives made it through the winter (so far! we’re keeping our fingers crossed for the other one)…
Sal and I were out the other day working with the bees, preparing to spray them with a solution of Oxalic acid and sugar water. Doesn’t sound very pleasant, does it? But it’s ok for bees, if done right, and the solution helps kill the trachial mites that can wipe out a hive, in a pretty low-impact way.
It was a bitterly cold day in January - 8 degrees- which is the kind of day you need so the bees won’t fly out of the hive - we popped the first top, and there were the girls, all huddled together on the left side of the smaller of our two hives. We sprayed them with about 100 cc’s of the sugar/oxalic solution and closed the hive back up.
The second of our hives was light this fall - the bees hadn’t made enough honey, and we had been feeding them with additional sugar syrup through the Fall to bulk up their honey stores for the winter, which they need to feed on and survive. But apparently, that wasn’t enough…we opened the hive, and it was empty, save for a few scores of dead bees on the bottom screen. This was the hive that we got all our honey out of this summer, and for those of you that have enjoyed that honey, you’ll understand our disappointment that this hive didn’t make it.
We’re hoping to figure out in the next months what happened.
